Scourge Up Your Life
by Darkrealmist v.2
Summary: An evening in the life of Rakdos' leading lady, Judith.


Scourge Up Your Life

Author's Note: Enjoy the story and R&R.

Disclaimer: I do not own anything related to or of _Magic: The Gathering_.

Summary:

An evening in the life of Rakdos' leading lady, Judith.

* * *

"Five minutes till curtain, Mistress Judith."

The grand dame of Rakdos waved off the juvenile goblin stagehand, then flipped a leg over one knee, erratically beating the heel of her spiked stiletto to the mixed screams outside her door. Some belonged to the gleeful willing, while others belonged to idiots out for a stroll who just happened to be fearfully absorbed into her cacophonous retinue as she arrived at the diversion club earlier that evening.

An unescorted traipse through the byways of Ravnica in the dead of night? To think, the public thought the Rakdos were the crazy ones.

She admired her reflection in her dressing room's blood-spattered vanity, the glow of an improv'd magical torch flittering in her manicured vise, its heat singeing the nerve endings of her fingers and giving her such a rush that she felt she might pass out from the entwined pain and pleasure. With her left, she bedecked her lips in a thin layer of sanguine paint on the fine-tip point of a brush made from bristles of a slaughtered nodorog.

Her face a bedazzled porcelain mask, she shot a manic grin in the partially shattered glass. This was her raison d'être. To entertain, ministering sinister soliloquies and engaging in ever more daring sadomasochistic stunts. To reap the riotous praise of the masses, the hellbent adulation of the Cult of Rakdos' rapacious followers. There was no greater calling.

Judith was no stranger to a life in the Ring. She grew up on the streets a Gateless, zibless ragamuffin. They called her "unguilded" and "Pup," but even they could not deny her fire. She forged alliances guild to guild, as her wise mentor Rinni once had, and her infamy steadily rose in the Carnarium to touch the rafters. She carved a name for herself as a highly demanded songstress and notoriously outlandish performance artist. Still had the skills and scars to prove it.

Raising applause wherever she tramped, she earned the appellation "Scourge Diva." In truth, there used to be five Scourge Divas, but raring to launch a solo career, Judith killed her four fellow songbirds in increasingly creative displays during a series of open-air concerts. Not the first set of bandmates she offed; she was previously linked to a wandering troupe she headlined, Judith Priest, esteemed for its rock anthems and heavy metal arias, musical numbers that incorporated actual stones and shrapnel tossed down onto the crowd. Her heart-stopping vocals received critical acclaim, so much so she put the legendary Juri Revue in its place.

All to appease their lethargic god, who grew fat on the fame she desired for herself. In the years before she became known as Judith, since that fateful hour she personally witnessed the fervour with which the Rakdos destroyed themselves for the Defiler's amusement, she'd lusted after nothing else but to do the same. Yet now, the idea reeked of undercity filth, worthy of excision from her brain on a hot pithing needle. The remembrance made her want to hack up bile, as though her lungs were stricken with tuberculosis.

The Demonlord could slumber for weeks at a time deep in the lava pit of his dungeon palace, Rix Maadi. When he did, the bloodwitches of his inner circle bickered and butchered to curry useless favour, servants prostrated before the seat of a lazy, gibbering power over a decamillenium in the making.

Being Rakdos meant she ascribed to unfettered freedom, no matter its cost or depravity. She never comprehended why the same party-going deviancy didn't extend to complaints hedged against the Demon. Honestly, there was no burlier an obstruction to their debauchery than the mondo ego on legs who hogged the spotlight for generations, insisting _he_ alone exclusively merited the distinction of being every circus revelry's final showstopper.

Rakdos extolled the big top; Judith, the ground-level bars. A real performer understood there was subtlety even to spectacle. She slipped in the back, as opposed to the Parun's braggadocios entrances. The sprawling megalopolis where they resided appropriated a similar bent in its construction, designed if for no other purpose than to fit his sorry, monstrous keister through each archway.

It provided an idle, fanciful outrage for her. Vehement banter she could stew upon to warm up before her burlesques. But guild leadership across the city had seen an unprecedented turnover these recent moons, fueling Judith's aspirations to unseat their autocrat-king. The figureheads behind the Golgari, Azorius, Orzhov, and Simic had all been either ousted or assassinated. The Dracogenius, Niv-Mizzet, mysteriously vacated his aerie, leaving the Izzet in the hands of his Viceroy, Ral Zarek. And there were rumblings that a rebellion among the Gruul had stripped the cyclops Borborygmos of his former clout. Even the guildmasters who escaped the purges seemed fractured by the unrest, flip-flopping on their prior edicts and at a standstill over how to address the chaos.

Despite travelling in different circles, of the new shakeups, Judith most identified with Vraska, the queen ascendant of the Golgari. A strong, iconic and intelligent self-made woman like herself, the gorgon purportedly slayed Jarad vod Savo to take the crown. If there was one detail Judith could fault Vraska for, it was her humourless opinion of her rule. Sure, under her stewardship, the Golgari gained a needed veneer of elegance, but what about the comical aspect of the Swarm's (preter)natural obsession with death?

Her makeup impeccable, Judith cancelled her sphere of flame. The prima donna met her entourage of toadies, understudies, and roustabouts, and together these spawns of mayhem – these sires of insanity – vamoosed towards the Mockturne's raucous din.

The opening act was already in progress. Footlight devils with melting candles bored into their skulls lit up the club's dangerously tightly packed stage. Positioned pell-mell around the apron was a cavalcade of calamity: firewheelers and blade jugglers; hackrobats and bladebranders; spikewheel acrobats and chainwalkers. A lampoonist danced an effigy of the Living Guildpact. A mummer in a jester's hat skewered critics on chandelier-pikes. Off-duty miners and Orzhov prelates got scorch marks tattooed to their unsuspecting flesh via signet. The audience was held captive – literally – to this theatre of horrors.

Everything was in disarray. A bona fide murder-gras.

Just another day for a Rakdos gal.

Heaved aloft by two cultist thugs, her figure bound in a padded leather costume and razor wire-netted boa, Judith cracked a pronged bullwhip terminating in an iron popper, splayed her arms above the glorious gore, and jovially shouted, "The show must go on!"


End file.
